Flight Interval
by Kunshi Sekijou
Summary: One shot. Extraction without surgery. Death without physical injury. Troika friendship.


**Disclaimer: Standard disclaimer applies.**

**A/N: **Halloween fic. Inspiration drawn from Murakami again.

**NOTES: Lurking plot. Unbreakable Troika friendship. Disturbing themes. Strangeness. Death. Third-person passerby POV. **

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><p><strong>Flight Interval<strong>

**[BGM:** GUMI - "Campanella"**]**

His first case came that morning.

Already waiting, the youth lied supine on the examination table when he strode through the automatic double doors donned on his scrubs, cap, mask and gown.

He was the pathologist assigned to diagnose the cause of his death. His strange and rather unexplainable death.

The investigation began with the chart. Picking up the folder from the adjustable table next to his tray of surgical instruments, he skimmed its contents for basic patient information.

_Name: Yanagi Renji_

_Gender: Male_

_Age: 22_

_Estimated time of death: 5:00AM_

Included in the chart was also a typed copy of a homeless man's narrative on the discovery of the subject's corpse. His eyes traveled down to peruse the content while twenty years of occupational experience filtered out all the extraneous details.

The account boiled down to the basics. The man first noticed the subject sitting on the bench at a local park at midnight. Dawn set in, the youth sat still in the same spot. Out of consideration, he had ventured to suggest the subject find shelter elsewhere, away from the chilly autumn weather. The subject slipped and fell to the ground when the man shook him. The man detected the oddness of the situation at that point and ran to report the occurrence to the police nearby.

The police arrived. Though, even they failed to find much evidence to explain his sudden death. The photograph the deceased clutched in his frozen fingertips became the closest thing they retrieved as evidence.

He held up the photograph now sealed in its zip-lock bag, preventing any unnecessary contamination. The picture contained the deceased youth. Two other males, perhaps his friends, appeared alongside him. A bluenet with a mischievous smile. A brunet with a stern frown. And the once-living youth between the two, wearing an inconspicuous grin. He caught it with his well-trained observant eyes.

Could this photograph somehow be related to the youth's mysterious demise?

He didn't know. Though, the police and detective currently investigated the case closely in hopes of identifying the two others in the picture. In addition, the local police agency enlisted his help in the autopsy of this youth.

Like always, he began his work stripping his subject down to the natural nudity of his birth. A flawless body lied before him in its naked glory. An inverted egg-shaped face. Soft shiny auburn hair. High forehead. Eyes closed with short eyelashes. Long pointed nose. Grim line set between thin lips. Pointed chin. Prominent collarbone. Lightly tanned skin. Tall, slim but muscular build with long arms and legs.

Every cadaver mapped out a unique story. Most importantly, bodies never lied. Yet, as interesting as this body's story appeared to be, he still had some difficulty defining the clear cause of its functions' abortion.

Not a single mark ruined his perfect presentation. No external wounds. With the exception of minimal amount of pallor, the youth looked almost as if alive.

He checked his carotid for a pulse just in case. He pressed two fingers at the curve along the other's neck.

Nothing.

That only left the possibility of internally injury. Though he questioned the absence of hematomas and swellings that should have formed due to internal injury. Perhaps he should shave his subject's head in order to better assess the presence of head trauma.

Eventually, after he assessed all he could externally (with the head unshaven) and found nothing, he resolved to move his assessment inward. Internally. He turned over to his tools, big and small, lying in the clean tray on the table. A gloved hand carefully selected an instrument.

A scalpel. The silver blade positioned itself at the small indentation between his subject's clavicles. He almost regretted inflicting such a cut on such a flawless body.

The blade sank into the flesh. It drew no blood surprisingly. He cut a straight line down his sternum through the subcutaneous tissue. Still no blood. No sign of red. Not when he sawed through his sternum. Not when he pulled his ribs apart.

The essence of life froze in this youth's veins; the same way time stood still forever for him.

Having the intention of assessing his subject's heart, he only discovered the vital organ to be missing from his chest cavity. As if someone had already cut him open previously to extract the organ. Someone's hand had curled around the organ and ripped it from its attachment of veins and arteries. If it had been so, then this would be a case of homicide.

But it wasn't. Because no one had cut him open previously. No one had extracted his organ.

For some strange reason, the barrenness of his thoracic cavity reminded him of his house when he first moved in. Of the little crack in the wall he hammered away and peeled open. Only to find a wooden pillar broken, with a midsection that went completely missing. Work of the termites. He knew from the squirming white dots still crowding the two ends of the rotting pillar. The pillar was replaced after the pest control center terminated the creepy crawler colony.

The sound of the automatic double doors opening behind him broke him from his thoughts.

Looking up, the newcomer had already walked from the door to the other side of the examination table.

"Doctor."

He nodded. "Detective."

The tall man before him appeared to be in his middle ages. A long face with a stubbled chin. High forehead. Hawk-like eyes that missed nothing. Long pointed nose. Mouth set in a serious line. Untamed dark hair with a few strands of white poking out. His good looks granted him popularity among his female colleagues, because he "almost looks like Hugh Jackman."

The detective peered down at his work.

"Did you cut out his heart for further analysis?"

"His heart was already missing before I performed the dissection."

The other raised an eyebrow.

"So, what did you find about the two in the picture?"

The detective shook his head. "Those two don't fall into the suspects category."

"Oh yeah?"

A sigh. "Did you watch the news on Monday? There was a local automobile accident. Those two were the victims."

"...Is that so."

Their conversation headed towards stagnation. All thanks to remorse.

The detective stared at the deceased's face again before continuing. "Funny."

He followed the other's line of vision. "What is?"

"I remember seeing this kid when I went to investigate their deaths at their homes. He was just sitting there like the way he's lying here now: blank and lifeless. I can't say I believe he's dead now, just like I can't say I believe that he's alive before."

"..."

"Now I'm really wondering if there's a plausible, scientific cause for his death. What if what killed him wasn't something physical? What if the devastation of losing his two friends hurt him so much that it destroyed his heart and killed him as a result?"

When science failed to explain certain phenomenon, people turn to extraordinary theories and explanations.

The other ran a hand through his hair, raking away the strange feeling. Then he snorted, maybe in self-mockery. "What the hell? That sounded like a bunch of bogus, didn't it?"

He had no problem accepting the other's hypothesis. But to the youth's parents and his superiors and colleagues, a report proposing such a hypothesis would only be ridiculed.

Before he could continue, a beeping sound went off. The detective's cell phone.

The man whipped out his phone, attached it to his ear and started conversing in a string of "Uh huh," "Yeah," and "Okay."

A moment later, the call ended.

"Look, I gotta leave now. His parents are at the station." He gestured to the supine figure with his chin.

He nodded. "All right, detective."

"I'll fill you in on the necessary details when I get back. See you around, doctor." The detective returned a nod too, before pivoting around and shuffling away, exiting through the automatic double doors.

He gazed at the zip-lock bag containing the single photograph again. Then back down at the youth on the cold, metallic examination table with his opened chest cavity.

And he thought, gosh, it sure looked empty in there. Like an abandoned house.

Deciding that he had to look at something else before the sight infected him with emptiness, he closed up the youth's chest cavity. Consideration convinced him to drape a blanket over his body.

He thought he detected some eye movement beneath the other's lids the same way people's eyes rolled from side to side when they dreamed in their sleep.

In the end, he disregarded it as a figment of his imagination produced from the hours of concentration adding up after all these years.

He just needed some rest.

Yeah. That's it.

Thinking, he pulled off his mask and gloves, disposed them in the waste receptacle by the door and left the room for his coffee break.

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><p><strong>END NOTES:<strong>

My mom's friends left after spending three weeks at our new house. It's funny how they left just when I've gotten used to and came to appreciate their company.

Unfortunately, my emotions always catch up way after my body does. Physically, I'm calm and stable. Even when they finally turn their backs, dragging their luggage behind them. Then I go home. And suddenly my insides felt like the vacant house I'm occupying.

So, that's why I wanted to write a story with the potence of emptiness.


End file.
